Jewish Museum (Manhattan)
The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along the Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the United States, as well as the oldest existing Jewish museum in the world, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture excluding Israeli museums, more than 30,000 objects.[1] While its collection was established in 1904 at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the museum did not open to the public until 1947 when Felix Warburg's widow sold the property to the Seminary.[2] It focuses both on artifacts of Jewish history and on modern and contemporary art. The museum's collection exhibition, Scenes from the Collection, is supplemented by multiple temporary exhibitions each year.[3]
This article is about the museum on Fifth Avenue. For the museum in Battery Park City, see Museum of Jewish Heritage.Established
Some of the museum's important exhibitions have included:
Programs[edit]
The Jewish Museum has a vast array of public educational programs which include talks and lectures, performances, hands on art making, group visits, specialist programming for visitors with disabilities, and resources for Pre-K-12 teachers.[29][30] Programming for visitors with disabilities can take a unique and special form, with exclusive access to the museum one day a month for a program like the Verbal Description Tour.[31][32] Participants are guided around sections of the empty museum by an art educator, who provides detailed, verbal descriptions of the art work, shares touch objects, and encourages discussion amongst the visitors. One participant described the ability to touch the art work as "...an honor, to be able to touch it. It felt like we were doing something so special, that other people can't do. So it actually creates an experience where you feel a connection to the art."[33]
Programming at the Jewish Museum caters for many different constituents, from live musical performances to events specifically curated for children, and families.[34] Events can be co-sponsored or in conjunction with other museums, particularly those located nearby on Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile.[35] Part of the goal of family programming is to help foster a younger audience for the museum, with Sunday being "family day", with a variety of activities on offer including gallery tours, free art workshops and parent-children storybook readings. Activities are designed to cross cultures, and explore subjects that can appeal to any race or religion, such as archaeological digs or an examination of color and impressionistic landscapes.[36]
Management[edit]
As of 2013, the Jewish Museum operates on a $17 million annual budget.[37] Under Joan Rosenbaum's leadership the museum's collection grew to 26,000 objects, its endowment to more than $92 million and its annual operating budget to $15 million from $1 million in 1981.[38] Rosenbaum chose to emphasize the Jewish side of the museum's identity, creating the permanent exhibition "Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey," while also mounting shows of modern Jewish artists such as Chaïm Soutine and contemporary artists such as Maira Kalman.[39] In 2013, the museum's board chose Claudia Gould, former director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, as its new director.[39]
In 2015 Kelly Taxter was named one of the top 25 female curators in the world by ArtNet.[40]